Babies With Glasses - The site for families of babies, infants and kids with glasses

Welcome Tambean!
written by jrfuda , July 15, 2007

Hi Tambean, welcome to the community. The glasses both my boys use are made from a soft silicon material (that’s them in the site’s banner and in my profile gallery). They are extremely flexible and durable. JC, my oldest, has been using the same frames for almost 3 years now, though the frames have probably held at least a dozen sets of lenses (three prescription adjustments and nearly ten changes due to scratched lenses). Another neat thing about these frames is they are designed to “wrap” around the wearers head and have holes as the end of the ear pieced for a strap.

For the first year JC had his glasses, we were given an elastic strap that resembled a 4-inch length of yarn that laced through the earpiece holes of the frames. It worked OK, but not as well as we liked. After about a year, our optical shop found a better strap that was compatible with the frames. This strap is a cloth/elastic band with connectors that fit the frame’s holes perfectly; you can see them in the photo of my boy’s in this blog entry. This strap is worlds better than the old “yarn” strap.

When you start your children on glasses early, it’s easy for the to adapt to them and resist taking them off. JC (now almost 3) started wearing his at 3 months, and Caleb (now 10 months) began wearing his at 6 months. JC, like your boys, was premature (7 weeks early). Caleb, however, was full term. When JC’s classmates at daycare were too young to understand that they should not remove JC’s glasses, we did have a few problems – but, once the daycare staff knew what to watch out for, it became less of a problem. Now that Caleb is old enough to sit up and cruise, he’s beginning to go after big brother JC’s glasses. I’m sure he’ll grow out of it soon enough, but it’s an issue you’ll have to contend with for a few months, I’m sure. You’ll be surprised, however, how well your children will be at not taking their own glasses off. I’m not saying it won’t happen, I’m just saying it won’t happen as often as you’d think it would.

One thing we did to make sure JC’s glasses stayed with him when his playmates were removing them was use a pacifier retainer to clip the glasses strap to his shirt. This way, if his glasses were removed, they remained tethered to his body. We only had to do this for a few months, until his playmates were old enough to understand they should not touch his glasses.

Check the site, especially the FAQ and the Tips and Tricks sections for lots of good advice.

Again, welcome!

Twins with glasses
written by rkline , July 15, 2007

I too have twins! Only one of my twins require glasses. She has been wearing them since 11 months old and is now 14 months old. The other twin did like to mess with them at first. We got her some sunglasses so she had her own to play with. The who does where glasses bothered them at first...we thought it was going to be a never ending battle, but now she does very well. She leaves them on unless she is very upset now. Good luck and keep in touch, I'll be interested to hear how it goes!